Brand new for 2015, "Ruff-Ruff Tweet and Dave" is an adventure-filled CBeebies show featuring three loveable friends. We had great fun creating a game to match the colourful and fun-packed tone set by the show.

Aims

Delivering a game that not only reflected the show’s colourful, adventurous character but also captures the innovative question-and-answer elements and makes good use of them on in the interactive stage.

To Make players feel right at home by carefully extending the show’s strong brand-feel through the visual and audio design, and setting up the core principles and values the gaming experience needed to revolve around.

Challenges

CBeebies were looking for an action-packed game that was quick to get into and featured the characters in their ‘RollyPods’. They also wanted to include the game-show like question-and-answer elements from the show, so we needed find a way to link these two very different elements together nicely.

The team at CBeebies were keen on using a top-down gameplay perspective for the driving section of the game as this provided something fresh amidst the plethora of side-on driving games already available. This presented a couple of challenges: top-down racing can get a little tricky in terms of car controls as the orientation of the car can differ from the orientation of the controls. We needed something simpler for the 3-6 year old CBeebies audience.

Results

After careful collaboration with both CBeebies and “Ruff-Ruff Tweet and Dave” creators Collingwood Studios, we arrived at a result which combines key aspects of the show format with a fast-paced fun-packed driving element, tied together with a unique story and designed with easy-to-play controls for a young CBeebies audience.

Rather than focus on competitive racing, we chose to make it more about the three characters adventuring across the land and overcoming obstacles together (with a little help from Hatty the Hamster!) We felt this approach was more in the spirit of the show and, would feel comfortably familiar with player. Crucially, it also meant we didn’t need tricky racing controls and could instead, implement an AI driving system that lets all three cars negotiate their own way around the track and each other. The player can optionally interact by simply touching the screen and moving their finger to guide the players on their way.

At several points along each journey, the trio happen across a wide range of obstacles that are blocking their path such as a muddy puddle, or a group of chickens. Here, the player is invited to help overcome the obstacle by splashing the mud away, or moving the chickens on, and helping Ruff-Ruff, Tweet and Dave continue their quest.

At the end of each level its ‘gametime!’ where the players answer a multiple choice question to continue. Just like with the obstacles, we packed this game full of questions across multiple categories for a different experience each time. The questions follow a wide range of learning areas such as memory, shape, colour and finding the hidden squirrel!

Packed with character, roly-pod driving, adventure, puzzles and quizzes we hope this game will serve as a fitting online counterpart to the shows debut this summer on mobile and desktop browsers.

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Feedback

It looks beautiful. It mirrors the tone of the show perfectly. Thanks so much for giving the children the chance to play along with our characters!"that meant the end product was even better than imagined. I would not hesitate to work with them again.